10 DC Comics Stories That Changed Everything

In 2011, just two years after Final Crisis, DC editorial was concerned the greater DCU was becoming too bogged down in continuity, again. Using the Flash family's time-hopping hijinks as a catalyst, DC decided to retcon everything to give new readers a jumping-on point, free from all that pesky, intimidating continuity. Again.

With the intention of making characters and their relationships easier to understand, all of DC's heroes' histories were altered. Canon was modified so that it'd only been five years since the beginning of the main DC continuity. Due to this, a lot of pivotal moments and characters were left on the cutting room floor. Except for Batman.

Batman's most defining post-Crisis activities were still considered canon. Except they all took place in the five years that Bruce (and every other character) has been active. That means Bruce has gone through three Robins and a Batgirl, been "broken" by Bane, "died," was replaced by Dick Grayson, and came back to life, all in half a decade. Needless to say, this was a little harder to follow than was intended.

Fans weren't too pleased that the characters they'd invested themselves in for years had all been functionally reset, rendering all their past successes and tragedies inconsequential. It combined or did away with DC's myriad realities into just 52 self-contained timelines, hence The New 52.

DC did their best to try to win readers over with this new direction but unsurprisingly, fanboys weren't very receptive, prompting a compromise and yet another retcon with DC Rebirth.